2014 ASIL Certificates of Merit Announced

by Duncan Hollis

I had the great pleasure the last several months to serve on ASIL’s Book Awards Committee (along with Jutta Brunnée, Jean d’Aspremont, Saira Mohamed, and a very well organized chair in Jacob Cogan). I’m pleased to announce that the Society’s Executive Council has selected three winners for 2014 based on our nominations. The winners (plus the Committee’s accompanying citation) are as follows:

In Socializing States: Promoting Human Rights Through International Law, Ryan Goodman and Derek Jinks offer a groundbreaking theory of acculturation that illuminates how social processes can promote human rights and, more generally, can influence norms. “Acculturation” refers to “the general process by which actors adopt the beliefs and behavioral patterns of the surrounding culture.” The authors distinguish acculturation from two other mechanisms of social influence: “material inducement,” or the offering of rewards for conformity or punishments for nonconformity with a state’s or institution’s demands, and “persuasion,” whereby actors internalize new norms through a process of social learning and “redefine their interests and identities accordingly.” Goodman and Jinks offer a sophisticated account that both defends the relevance of acculturation and acknowledges its weaknesses in some areas. The theoretical complexity and methodological rigor of Socializing States make this a book that should be studied by any scholar interested in promotion of human rights, the spread of global norms, regime design, or compliance. It has already changed scholarship in these areas and will certainly continue to influence the field in the years to come.

Robert Kolb’s International Court of Justice provides a magisterial, lucid study of its subject. The breadth and depth of the treatment are impressive: Kolb takes the reader from the history of the Court, to its role in international society, to the more technical questions concerning its composition, powers and procedures, to the development of its jurisprudence, and to its future. The finely grained discussion provides much more than a mere survey of the Court’s constitutive instruments and decisions. It engages the Court as an institution and asks how it actually operates, and secures efficacy and authority in doing so. The book’s careful and detailed coverage of the Court’s legal framework and operation will benefit practitioners and scholars alike. There is no doubt that Kolb’s volume immediately takes a place among the authoritative references on the Court.

The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law innovatively and comprehensively provides a timely and ambitious global history of international law from the sixteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Under the skilled editorship of Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters, the contributors, experts who themselves come from all parts of the world, present a history that imagines international law as the product of different regions, cultures, actors, and eras. Setting a new agenda for the field, the Handbook will be the indispensable starting point for students and researchers exploring the history of international law.

The awards will get presented at this year’s ASIL Gala Dinner. I’m looking forward to seeing the authors there and having a chance to congratulate them personally on their achievements.

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